The GAT Thread

Waucod Meesman · Post by **Waucod Meesman** » Fri Mar 24, 2006 5:39 pm

TAKE THIS KURKE I'M BACK TO MY DOUBLE POSTING/SPAMMING WAYS

Kurke_Aumea · Post by **Kurke_Aumea** » Fri Mar 24, 2006 6:07 pm

Waucod Meesman wrote:TAKE THIS KURKE I'M BACK TO MY DOUBLE POSTING/SPAMMING WAYS

Word of caution: Don't piss off a mod. :twisted:

Take this as your warning. Admittedly, I've been pretty relaxed with the double-post rule lately, but it seems like the double-posts lately tend to have meaning and purpose.

Now, posts without purpose or meaning will suffer a tragic fate.

Oh yeah, have a nice day!!!

And Lev, I wouldn't be surprised if the rumor about the Revolution supporting all of those older games was true. It's something that Nintendo would do. Here's a link to the article I got this from:

http://www.gamespot.com/news/6146528.html

Waucod Meesman · Post by **Waucod Meesman** » Wed Mar 29, 2006 7:43 pm

So how about them Cowboys

Leviathen · Post by **Leviathen** » Wed Mar 29, 2006 8:03 pm

Can't wait to hear more aobut this system.

I can see a lot of games not being available.... and I wonder how much it will cost to download games as I am sure it will not be free.

Kurke_Aumea · Post by **Kurke_Aumea** » Wed Mar 29, 2006 9:04 pm

WEll, the cool thing about the Xbox 360 is the marketplace. (Yeah, there's a bunch of other cool things about it, but Marketplace is truly revolutionary) You can download demos, trailers, music, music videos, dashboard themes, arcade games, and a whole bunch of other stuff. A good chunk of that stuff is free. The free stuff include the demos and the trailers. The arcade games cost points. You can get 1600 points for $19.99 (about $0.80 per point). The average arcade game ranges anywhere between 500 and 800 points. These arcade games range from your classic games like Geometry Wars to newer games like Hexic HD (that one is addicting...).

Here's an interesting tidbit, last week Microsoft released a statement noting that the Marketplace had passed over 10 million downloads since it was started this past November. With 360s becoming more available, this number will rise rapidly I imagine. Truthfully, I haven't purchased anything off of Marketplace yet, but I have downloaded quite a few thigns (trailers and demos mostly).

Now, part of the reason I bring this all up is to prove just how pointless the format wars are. Honestly, I don't give a rat's ass about HD-DVD or Blu-Ray. Yeah, you can store insane amounts of information on those discs, but by the time they hit mainstream, digital distribution will reach more people than you think. Marketplace only proves this. Imagine a service where you can download everything on Marketplace plus music and movies. And you can download it all right to your hard drive. Forget the format wars, digital distribution is the way of the future.

Now, to call Time Warner cable and see why I have been downgraded from 3.0Mbs download to 1.5Mbs download...

Kurke_Aumea · Post by **Kurke_Aumea** » Wed Mar 29, 2006 9:32 pm

Leviathen wrote:Can't wait to hear more aobut this system.

I can see a lot of games not being available.... and I wonder how much it will cost to download games as I am sure it will not be free.

To follow up on this, Gamespot had a quick little article about a Nintendo executive's interview on CNN. Check the link:

http://www.gamespot.com/news/6146790.html

To summarize, Nintendo's Revolution games will likely be less than $50 and they will digitaly distribute the old NES, SNES, and N64 games. The largest of those is said to clock in at about 70MB. The slightly disturbing part about all of it is the fact that the interview confirmed that the Revolution will have only 512MB of flash memory, but failed to confirm if the Revolution will ship with a hard drive. The executive mentioned that the console has slots for SD cards, but the max capacity on a SD card is 4GB.

Personally, I don't see how you can digitally distribute classic games without a hard drive. Yeah, you can use SD cards, but it's PS2 all over again. "Hey, where'd my memory card go?!?!?!" If you have to pay for the classic games, the use of SD cards could become really annoying. Picture paying $5.00 for a classic Nintendo game, only to find it a waste of money because you misplace your SD card. For Nintendo's sake, I hope they ship the Revolution with a hard drive.

bizob · Post by **bizob** » Wed Mar 29, 2006 10:07 pm

Kurke_Aumea wrote: Forget the format wars, digital distribution is the way of the future.

I couldn't agree more, although I do think this format war will decide who gets the last big chunk of the traditional distribution market. After that digital distribution will take over, especially as home internet services get faster like the upcoming fiber optic connections. imagine connection speeds just shy of the speed of light. Amazing.

Kurke_Aumea wrote:Now, to call Time Warner cable and see why I have been downgraded from 3.0Mbs download to 1.5Mbs download...

WHOA! That's insane. My TW connection got upgraded from 3Mbs to 5Mbs a few months ago and is about to get cranked up to 7Mbs. All at no additional cost to me.

Kurke_Aumea · Post by **Kurke_Aumea** » Wed Mar 29, 2006 10:56 pm

Yeah, a while ago I noticed that they had me upgraded to 3Mbs download speed. Then, just for kicks, I checked my speed and it was back to 1.5Mbs. Knowing my luck, it's all because of where I live. I live in the country at the very edge of Time Warner's service range for Road Runner. For the longest time, I imagine I was the only one on my street with cable internet. I have a feeling someone else finally got high-speed and they are cutting into my bandwidth. Since cable is shared bandwidth, this could almost make sense. Because if there's a nother reason, I would really like to know.

On a side note, does anyone know why my cable modem likes to take random 30 second breaks. It seems like every 5, 10, 15, or 30 minutes, I lose service for like 30 seconds. It could be the age of my modem or it could be the fact that the cable company has the cable from the pole to the house wrapped around so many tree branches, every time there's a breeze it knocks me out of service.

And as far as the format wars go, I'm not really sure how much of a difference this war will make. Let's face it, Napster ushered in a new era of media. I just don't think either format will mean much in the long run. It will be 3 to 5 years before these formats will be at affordable prices for the consumer. By that time, digital distribution could take them all on. Considering the amount of homes that have internet access and the amount of homes with high-speed connections, digital distribution could take the system by storm right now. With faster technology on the horizon and consumers quicly moving to high-speed connections, I say skip the format wars and give me an all-in-one entertainment system that I can link up to my PC with.

Imagine if we could take a computer, TIVO, and a dish/cable box and stick them all in one. Imagine the possibilities!!! OK, maybe it's already here. Rumor has it that Microsoft will be adding DirectTV capabilities to the Xbox 360. If you're a DirectTV subscriber, you can watch TV through your Xbox 360. With the hard drive, they can turn the thing into a Tivo too. Now, if only Microsoft would support Dish Network...

Leviathen · Post by **Leviathen** » Wed Mar 29, 2006 11:23 pm

I think blue ray is awesome technology, though I don't know a whole lot about the situation, but the princple behind it is awesome, and I think is going to be more applicable to just games in the future.

I feel it is an important technology to explore, as I think it will be more common to see blue lights rather than red lights in everything that currently reads discs.

Kurke_Aumea · Post by **Kurke_Aumea** » Wed Mar 29, 2006 11:27 pm

And just for the Nintendo fans out there, chek the link:

http://www.gamespot.com/features/6146540/index.html

It's basically everything we currently know about the Revolution. It's a good read. The things that have me concerned about the Revolution are still the controller and the fact that Nintendo can milk a franchise more than George Lucas can milk SW...

I'm just not digging the unconventional controller and the lack of original titles for any Nintendo console just has me worried. Yeah, seems like everything released nowadays is a sequal or prequal, but it seems like Nintendo is the worst out of the bunch. Seriously, how many Mario games have been made?!?!?! Don't get me wrong, they do have some original games buried in there, but they are still pumping out Marios and Zeldas.

Kurke_Aumea · Post by **Kurke_Aumea** » Wed Mar 29, 2006 11:39 pm

Leviathen wrote:I think blue ray is awesome technology, though I don't know a whole lot about the situation, but the princple behind it is awesome, and I think is going to be more applicable to just games in the future.

I feel it is an important technology to explore, as I think it will be more common to see blue lights rather than red lights in everything that currently reads discs.

The interesting thing about the format wars, is that none of it really affects gaming. Yeah, games for the PS3 will be on the BR discs, but they really don't need that if the compression is performed correctly. Heck, Microsoft isn't even supporting a new format. They said they are putting out a add-on HD-DVD drive for the 360, but it's only going to be used for movies. Microsoft has some wicked sweet compression codecs for their games, which is why they stuck with the old DVDs rather than the new formats. I think they did it because they didn't see a need to and because if Sony wins the format war, they aren't up sh!t creek as they can always make a BR add-on.

Another thing to note about Sony. When it comes to their games, they are CG fanatics. I'm not talking about the faked demos at E3 2005, but there is tons more CG video on PS2 games than you see on Xbox games. CG video is insanely huge in file size. The fact that you don't see much CG on Xbox games is another reason why their file sizes are so small.

Personally, I enjoy CG videos in games as it beats watching cutscenes using the game engine. What I don't like is when a game company tries to sell a game on the CG video alone. See Final Fantasy X and Call of Duty: Big Red One. The commercials for those games are nothing but CG movies and some people are tricked into thinking that they will see CG quality graphics in the game. To me, that's false advertising.

Leviathen · Post by **Leviathen** » Wed Mar 29, 2006 11:42 pm

I agree with all that, and I think the PS3 needing blu-ray technology is rediculous, but I am quite interested in the developement of blue light optical reading technology itself. Don't care who developes it, I think it has a lot of potential.

bizob · Post by **bizob** » Thu Mar 30, 2006 10:30 pm

Kurke_Aumea wrote: With faster technology on the horizon and consumers quicly moving to high-speed connections, I say skip the format wars and give me an all-in-one entertainment system that I can link up to my PC with.

Imagine if we could take a computer, TIVO, and a dish/cable box and stick them all in one. Imagine the possibilities!!! OK, maybe it's already here. Rumor has it that Microsoft will be adding DirectTV capabilities to the Xbox 360. If you're a DirectTV subscriber, you can watch TV through your Xbox 360. With the hard drive, they can turn the thing into a Tivo too. Now, if only Microsoft would support Dish Network...

Check out the Media Center PC's. Except for the cable/DirectTV/Dish Network decoder boxes it can be an all-in-one machine. Most would require a video card upgrade for high end gaming but thats about it. With a tv tuner card and WindowsXP Media Center Edition your PC becomes a digital video recorder. Most of them come with FM tuner cards as well so you can listen to local radio too. We carry some pretty nice HP and Gateway models at work with Athlon64 X2 (dual core) processors and up to 2GBs of RAM.

Kurke_Aumea · Post by **Kurke_Aumea** » Thu Mar 30, 2006 11:25 pm

bizob wrote:
Kurke_Aumea wrote: With faster technology on the horizon and consumers quicly moving to high-speed connections, I say skip the format wars and give me an all-in-one entertainment system that I can link up to my PC with.

Imagine if we could take a computer, TIVO, and a dish/cable box and stick them all in one. Imagine the possibilities!!! OK, maybe it's already here. Rumor has it that Microsoft will be adding DirectTV capabilities to the Xbox 360. If you're a DirectTV subscriber, you can watch TV through your Xbox 360. With the hard drive, they can turn the thing into a Tivo too. Now, if only Microsoft would support Dish Network...

Check out the Media Center PC's. Except for the cable/DirectTV/Dish Network decoder boxes it can be an all-in-one machine. Most would require a video card upgrade for high end gaming but thats about it. With a tv tuner card and WindowsXP Media Center Edition your PC becomes a digital video recorder. Most of them come with FM tuner cards as well so you can listen to local radio too. We carry some pretty nice HP and Gateway models at work with Athlon64 X2 (dual core) processors and up to 2GBs of RAM.

I know about media center, but I'm still waiting fur the ultra all-in-one media center. The cool/sucky thing about the 360 is that you can use Media Center to sream video to your 360. I say cool because streaming video to my 360 just sounds cool. I say sucky because Microsoft is ofrcing you to use Media Center. Of course, I hear the reason behind this was to prevent piracy. it's the same reason why you can't copy MP3s to your 360, but you can stream them or burn them to the hard drive.

Waucod Meesman · Post by **Waucod Meesman** » Fri Mar 31, 2006 2:40 pm

I leave for a day and look what happens you guys get on topic